


How Could I Ever Refuse

by JG Firefly (Phoenix_Call)



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Eavesdropping, F/F, Oneshot, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 00:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15718173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_Call/pseuds/JG%20Firefly
Summary: It's not that Laura has a habit of eavesdropping... it's that she has a habit of not leaving when she hears things that she shouldn't. Like her crush venting about some girl not liking her back, for instance.(Whoever this girl is, Laura thinks, she must be an idiot.)





	How Could I Ever Refuse

“You’re _smitten.”_

For the third time in the span of ten minutes, Laura’s head lifted from the textbook she had been attempting to bury her nose in, her eyes narrowing in the direction of the nearest shelf.

The library was supposed to be a _quiet_ place to study, if one could trust the signs that were hung every five feet—on the walls, on the shelves… sometimes on the books themselves, if the staff had gotten particularly overzealous—and Laura had never known anyone to disobey. The lifetime bans were no joke, and it did not take much to earn one. LaFontaine had received their first, and final, strike their freshman year, for sneaking in a granola bar during a midnight study session. Laura had been smuggling them research materials ever since she started at Silas, a duty Perry had been most grateful to hand over.

“Ha! You’re _blushing_ ,” the voice came, yet again; loud, and male, and obnoxiously smug.

Laura rolled her eyes and attempted to focus back on the equation that took up the majority of her current page. It should be a crime, really, that journalism majors were still forced to take algebra courses...

“Fuck off, Will.”

The second voice, the one that had thus far been mostly garbled murmurs—words caught up in snarls and grumbling—came through the wall of books clearly for the first time, dangerously loud, and Laura could not have gone back to quadratic equations if she wanted to.

She might not know the owner of the first voice, but she certainly knew the owner of the second.

“Oh-ho, I most certainly will not. But it sounds like you need to.”

Silence.

“I’m _right_. Oh my god; I might faint!”

“Shut _up.”_

“You haven’t slept with her? You _like_ her, and you haven’t slept with her?”

“For fucks sake, Will—”

“You’re in _looooove—_ ow!”

There was the sound of a muffled smack, like Will had just been hit upside the head.

Laura could not deny that she was leaning closer to the source of the conversation. She had to scoot her chair a fraction to the right to prevent falling over, and she felt no shame.

In fact, she felt a great deal of something else.

There was a low, sinking pull in her chest, dragging her lungs down somewhere towards the vicinity of her gut, and the weight of it all was apparently having no impact on her heart. It was pounding out of her chest, rushing in her ears… she felt like she might throw up.

Despite the amount of space her brain had carved out for the other girl, Laura could not say she fully knew Carmilla Karnstein. It was hard, after all, to say that you knew someone when you were barely a blip in their life. They met a few times a week, grumbled over their shared hatred for Professor York’s biology course, and guzzled an unhealthy amount of coffee. Sometimes Laura rambled about other things—her roommate’s obnoxious music choices, Perry’s unreasonable cleanliness standards, LaFontaine’s latest experiment—and Carmilla shook her head and let her, the tiniest sliver of a smile on her lips.

It was a routine, and nothing more. Everyone and their mother had warned her not to get involved with Carmilla, the moment she had dared speak the other girl’s name, and she had since spotted her flirting with an endless supply of girls at the Lustig.

When Laura had asked—as innocently as she dared—why Carmilla had not been there recently, she had simply shrugged and said she was too busy. Laura had believed her, since Carmilla had been requesting study sessions three or four times a week (instead of their usual two), but now it looked like there was another reason as well.

One that she had not shared with Laura.

“You have to at least tell me about her,” Will said. There had been a lingering silence from the other side of the stacks, the sort that suggested at least an attempt at productivity, even if Laura had not turned so much as a page. Now, he sounded chastened. Genuinely intrigued.

“I don’t _have_ to do anything.”

“…Please?”

The following sigh was long-suffering, as if Carmilla had known him for a while, and knew his tone well.

“I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t do… _this._ Whatever this is.”

“I’m aware.” A pause. “But, like, she must be hot, right?”

 _“Will,”_ Carmilla growled.

“Hey, I’m just saying. If she’s got you this flustered… she must be hot.”

In the ensuing silence, Laura could only imagine the infamous Karnstein glare she had come to know from their study sessions. The one that Carmilla shot at waiters who hovered too long, or girls who tried to flirt with her while she was busy.

(Sometimes Laura wished she had that easy confidence—the sort that could roll eyes at a straight-up _ten_ just because she wanted to finish her assignment.)

“Fine. _Yes._ She’s very pretty.”

“Knew it.”

“But it’s not just—it isn’t about _that_.” A chair squeaked, sharp and loud. “She’s… challenging. I never know where the conversation is going to go. And she’s just… crazy smart.”

“Well, no wonder you’re worried.” There was a smugness to his words, and he continued without interruption, “I mean, no way a brainy chick would date you.”

The ensuing noise suggested Carmilla had attempted another swipe at him, one that he managed to dodge.

“Jeez, I’m kidding. C’mon, when are you going out with her?”

“I’m not.”

“Hold up, I’ve had to watch you mope about this girl for the past _hour_ , and you haven’t even made a move?”

“I do not mope.”

“Please. You’ve been insufferable. She’s probably just busy—she must care about her classes, right? Since she’s _smart?”_

Something clattered across the table—presumably Carmilla’s phone.

“Maybe.”

“Text her again.”

Carmilla scoffed, “No.”

“What, are you in middle school, kitty?” His voice lilted with fresh mocking, “Can’t double-text your crush?”

Carmilla mumbled something.

“What?”

“I said it’s _not_ double-texting.”

“I’m afraid you lost me, there, sis.”

Laura missed Carmilla’s next words, in the wake of the realization that followed the nickname.

 _Sister_. Carmilla was Will’s _sister_. The pieces clicked into place, all of the vague mentions about Carmilla’s annoying younger brother jumping to life in a line of memories. He had just started at Brown—he was set to be the jewel of the family, the answer to all of Carmilla’s failings.

What he was doing here, today, Laura could not fathom.

Carmilla’s response must have been hilarious, because Will was laughing, hitting the table in his mirth, and Laura halfway expected the library police to descend like birds of prey from the rafters.

“Give it,” he forced out, still chortling, “C’mon, let me read them!”

“Fuck off, William!”

“You sent—” his voice broke with another burst of laughter “— _five_ texts. Five! In a _row_.”

Laura had to agree with his astonishment, even if she couldn’t join in on the humor. The urge to vomit was increasing with every word.

She and Carmilla texted, but the conversation usually followed the same pattern on their screens as it did in person. Laura did the majority of the talking, while Carmilla acted interested only when it served her. There were times when Laura would come to a halt—having just railed against the patriarchy, or the lack of quality vegetarian options in the cafeteria, or the unfairness of her high school finally cutting uniforms three years after she left—only to find Carmilla blinking as though just coming back to life.

In text form, this looked like a three minute pause before the little typing bubbles materialized and transformed into ‘that was quite the essay’ or ‘how Lois Lane of you.’

To say she had never received five texts in a row would be an understatement. Any double-texts looked more like ‘Hey’ followed with a request to study, or a notice that she had arrived at their usual café and found a table.

Will had apparently gained control of Carmilla’s phone, because he began to read out loud, his voice pitching dramatically in a terrible impression of his sister: “ _Hey._ That’s it? That’s your opener? Man, who would have thought I had more game than you…” He cleared his throat, “ _What are you up to?_ Your originality is astounding, truly.”

“Will, I swear to god…”

There was another scuffling sound, and then Will was on his feet, his voice moving with him, coming closer for a moment and then pulling rapidly away.

“ _If you haven’t drowned in your study guide, I thought we could try Sully’s…_ The fuck is ‘Sully’s’?”

“It’s a bakery,” Carmilla grumbled.

Laura couldn’t deny that that one hurt. She had been the one to suggest Sully’s to Carmilla, two weeks prior, an invitation that Carmilla had turned down. Her follow-up to the claim that she was ‘too busy’ had been something along the lines of ‘try not to drown in the sugar without a chaperone, cupcake.’

“ _And yes, I know you’ve got your last final tomorrow, but you deserve a break._ Aw, how sweet. And look how close together all those timestamps are… my, aren’t we impatient.”

“Well it’s not every day that I do this,” Carmilla snipped, the wear in her patience breaking through.

“Oh, please. You _literally_ pick up girls every day. You stole two of my girlfriends.”

“Well, they were too hot for you.”

“Carmilla.”

She blew out a breath, loud and angry. “I told you. I like her, okay? And that—it’s _that_ that I don’t do.”

There was silence, the both of them unreadable through the bookshelves despite Laura’s best efforts to gain x-ray vision.

She had seen Carmilla angry—she was quick to jump to it, and somehow even quicker to fall back—and she had seen her apathetic and bored and frustrated. In all of the past five months, though, she had never seen her vulnerable. Not like this. Not raw and honest and afraid.

The idea that someone might reject her, that there was a girl was out there who had won the lottery and did not want the spoils, was somewhere beyond Laura’s usual grasp of astonishment. In spite of the jealousy (which was still brewing acidic in her stomach, threatening to eat its way up her throat) she felt a surge of protectiveness, an entirely inadvisable urge to round the stacks and tell Carmilla she deserved better.

The phone clacked loudly as it landed back on the table, returned to Carmilla’s possession at last.

“I didn’t think that last one was necessary, you know,” said Will. He sounded sobered, and Laura’s head nodded without her consent, relieved at the kindness.

Carmilla did not answer verbally (Laura pictured her shrugging, or glaring, or perhaps rolling her eyes if she was already over the moment of weakness) and a few seconds later it didn’t matter, because the clock tower began to drone out its count.

It was already noon, and the realization jarred Laura back to the reality of her table. Her study materials were still lying around her, greedily taking over the whole of a four-person table, and she had not made any progress in the last twenty minutes. Not to mention she had lunch plans with LaF and Perry, who had finished their last exam that morning and were leaving for the summer within the next two hours.

“Shit,” she hissed to herself, digging through the pile of loose-leaf papers that she had been trying to sort into a binder and finally locating her phone under the flap of her book bag.

It was dead. Of course.

“You should get going,” she caught Carmilla’s words again, “Mother will be waiting.”

A chair squealed against the tile.

“It’s not too late to come along. We both know you don’t need these summer credits. I can hang out until you finish finals.”

“Go,” she said. “And don’t tell her you stopped here.”

“Fine. But I offered, and I want that remembered, okay? I was willing to put up with you for six hours in an enclosed space.”

“I’ll get you a medal,” she scoffed, but the ensuing shift of cloth suggested there was a hug. “Text me when you get there. And _not_ from the road.”

“Aw, worried about my safety. Now I’m the one that’s honored.”

Whatever her response, he laughed.

Laura found her charger in her bag, biting her lip as she adjusted the tape that was holding it together, and carefully hooked it into the outlet under her chair. The phone buzzed in appreciation and, a moment later, glowed with the familiar loading screen.

She had finally talked her dad into a smartphone the year prior, and the ridiculous thing was already incapable of making it through a full day, even when she wasn’t overloading it with sugary matching games.

“Call your girl,” Will was saying, when she had straightened up in her seat and blown the hair out of her mouth. “You’ll both be here all summer; just ask her to celebrate the end of finals and then figure it out from there. Hell, buy some roses. If she can’t figure out your intentions from that, then she’s not actually smart.”

They exchanged final farewells (which seemed to include a decent number of insults) while Laura tapped insistently at her phone. It had woken up, and allowed her to unlock the home screen, but now it appeared to be frozen.

She barely repressed a groan of frustration in time to duck her head as Will cut past her, and, once his back was turned, she followed his progress through the tables and to the queue that had gathered in front of the elevators.

The resemblance was clear—he and Carmilla shared their sharp cheekbones, their jet black hair. There was even something similar about the lines of their profile, the way his nose jutted and his chin was shaped, that suggested their familial link.

Laura wondered, absently, if she would have been able to pick out who he was, without today’s context clues, had she just seen him on the sidewalk. She had spent enough time memorizing Carmilla’s features—it was not outside the realm of possibility.

On the table, her phone hummed in quick succession, notifications leaping one after the other across the top of her screen, too fast for her to read. When it stilled, there was an insistent little ‘8’ on top of her messages app.

Laura frowned. That was more than she would have expected, for just an hour or two in the library.

The most recent was from her Dad, and entirely predictable: _Study hard!! Love you_

The next two were from LaFontaine and Perry, with nearly identical timestamps, apologizing for pushing lunch back until 1:30 because LaFontaine was ‘slowing down the packing process’ (according to Perry.)

The only other notification was from Carmilla, but the preview didn’t make any sense.

Laura opened the conversation, the furrow in her brow only etching itself deeper as she realized there was not one message, but an entire string.

_(10:21 AM): Hey_

_(10:21 AM): What are you up to?_

_(10:22 AM): If you haven’t drowned in your study guide, I thought we could try Sully’s_

_(10:28 AM): And yes, I know you’ve got your last final tomorrow, but you deserve a break_

And, finally:

_(11:07 AM): I understand if you don’t want to, though._

Laura’s mouth fell open.

There was no slow moment of realization, no confusion, no denial. Her father had always said she had been a practical child, and it was a trait that had followed her into adulthood. It was what lined up the facts in neat little rows for her to dissect, sometimes quicker than even her motor-mouth could keep up with, and it was what, now, presented a startling new reality before her.

That whole time, Carmilla had been talking about _her_.

Saying she was smart.

That she was pretty.

That she… _liked_ her.

Carmilla liked her.

Liked her so much, in fact, that she had willingly subjected herself to the teasing of her brother… which, for the past hour, Laura had unapologetically eavesdropped upon.

It occurred to her, rather belatedly, that Carmilla would not have appreciated having an audience. That she probably should have made herself known far sooner, or, better yet, left entirely the moment she had recognized who was on the other side of the bookshelf.

It was too late to do anything about that _now_ , of course. And, before Laura could fully process the depth of her current mess, her phone screen glowed with an image of Carmilla’s face—adorably scrunched up in rebuke of the camera—and the cast of Mamma Mia launched into chorus _._

She had set her ringtone to _Waterloo_ the moment Carmilla had grumbled out an irritable, _“I suppose it’s the most tolerable.”_

The sudden stillness was almost tangible—like a false silence, something that was only real for the pounding in her head and the numbness gathering in her limbs. The roar of “couldn’t escape if I wanted to!” was practically a flashing beacon for her location (and painfully accurate.)

Less than a minute prior, Laura had had no earthly idea what she was going to do. Should she flee from the library and never speak of being there? Should she text back immediately, make her feelings clear?

Now, she acted on the autopilot she reserved for dire situations—things like fantastically sized spiders perching on her bedroom wall, or phone calls to the financial aid office—and before she knew what her feet were doing, she found herself around the corner and directly in front of Carmilla, with no further plan in sight.

The other girl’s eyes darted from her face to the still ringing phone in her hand, what little color that had been in her cheeks long drained out of them.

“You—” she started, but Laura did not let her get any further.

“I didn’t know it was you, at first!” she exclaimed. “I was just—I was trying to study, okay, and you know I’m nosey, and I’m always listening—I mean you remember that time I transcribed a whole fight this couple was having at the table next to me during chem lab, and I sent it to you and asked who you thought was in the wrong, and you said it was creepy, but in, like, a really specific way that somehow _wasn’t_ creepy… with your tone, or whatever, at least, that’s how I interpreted it.

“So this was like that. Like… I was just trying to study but you were being loud enough that I could hear. And I didn’t even know what you were talking about, so mostly I was wondering, y’know, ‘who’s this guy that Carm seems to know really well,’ and then he turned out to be your brother, so that was cool and new information, which didn’t seem bad for me to find out like that, right? Right.”

She shoved a hand through her hair, taking a much-needed breath. Carmilla was still staring at her, mouth slightly open. Laura rushed onward:

“And my phone was dead, by the way, which was why I didn’t text you back. I was so focused on studying because it’s my last final, and algebra is the _worst_ , and you know I’m not lying about that because I complain literally all the time. So, yeah, it was completely out of commission, and I had _no_ clue, otherwise I would have definitely said yes to going to Sully’s, since I’m the one that told you how awesome it is and I just know you’re going to love the baklava because it’s way better than that stuff we got at the cafeteria last month. But it’s not like it would have mattered what you said, anyways; you could ask me if I wanted to go jump of the roof of the Lustig and I’d probably be like ‘cool what time are we meeting’ because it’s like… It’s _you_ , y’know?”

Carmilla, apparently, did not know, because her eyes went wider at this.

“Okay, maybe not. But, hey, this is already really awkward because I just pried _way_ into your life without fully meaning to, and because I’m babbling—which you probably find really annoying, so I should stop, like, five minutes ago—but, hey, I might as well just put this out there, since we’re in this deep… I like orchids better than roses. And I’m free literally any time. Except tomorrow. Because the—the final. That you know about. But, besides that!”

Very slowly, there was a line of pink growing across Carmilla’s cheekbones, her lips twitching at the corner and her eyebrows lowering from her hairline. Laura did not even want to image what her own faced looked like, in comparison. It felt far too hot.

Carmilla, still, had yet to say a word.  

“Okay, I’m gonna go!” Laura declared. She allowed herself one final, horribly awkward nod at Carmilla, and then spun clumsily on her heel and barely avoided wiping out when she rounded the corner and found a book cart that had not been there when she left.

She gathered her things with speed that should have been categorized as inhuman—were there a record for ‘panicked escape,’ she was sure she would have won it—and then she was gone, bolting out into the wall of humidity that was a Silas summer.

Just as she reached the edge of the clock tower’s shadow, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Three times, in quick succession.

Swallowing hard, she tugged it free.

_(12:13 PM): Hey_

_(12:13 PM): Do you want to get dinner tonight?_

_(12:13 PM): I can pick you up at 7?_

Before she could respond with an enthusiastic ‘YES’ (algebra be damned), her phone buzzed again. Twice.  

_(12:14 PM): By the way…_

_(12:14 PM): You’re cute when you ramble._  

**Author's Note:**

> This might be the shortest fic I've ever written. Thanks for coming along for the ride :)
> 
> Feel free to drop a line on tumblr: [jg-firefly](https://jg-firefly.tumblr.com/)


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